Sunday, August 29, 2010

Secrets for Safety

We are all children. Apparently.

A poison gas leak which spread from Sydney to Melbourne is kept quiet in case it 'panics' people. What did they expect the public to do if they knew? Evacuate the area? Sounds quite sensible actually - better anyway than exposing people to the risk.

What else are they not telling us?

Then, of course, there is the coming Sun storm which is expected to hit with the 'force of 100 million hydrogen bombs.

I can only speculate that - given the cover up of the gas - the real dangers of this solar storm could be infinitely more frightening than they are admitting. Time, as they say, will tell.

One thing strikes me about this report though:

They claim satellites will be aged by 50 years, rendering GPS even more useless than ever

Just love that point - rendering GPS even more useless than ever. Now there are no state secrets in that one!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Wonko is frightened - but for nice reasons!

Last week I wrote of A Little Sanity At Last - justifiable criticism of judges in Australia.

Well this week something else has occurred which seems oh so sane.

I am talking about Coalition Plans To Dump Internet Censor.

This is excellent news because unless this is an election issue then we will be censored and that will be bad. The currently encumbered government has repeatedly stated that they will implement this ludicrous scheme.

I am all for stopping perverts from eyeing off children - in fact, I am for much tougher penalties for pedophiles, specifically mandatory removal of all important dangly bits. (Unfortunately too many bleading hearts don't like the idea. Plenty of abused children probably do though!).

The internet censor wont stop that sort of thing though. Simple SSL to an IP address will get around it, and meanwhile the rest of Australia will have their internet crawl even slower while any page critical of whichever government is in power will be neatly assigned to the do not show list.

The only way this wont happen is if the government that we elect makes this part of their election basis - i.e. to bury the internet filter.

Which is what the coalition are promising.

There are plenty of good reasons to vote for the current government or a new government. But at the end of the day, if you want the freedom to be informed, then there is one compelling reason to vote out our current misbegotten crew. The internet filter.

Now they have promised it, it is up to Australians to follow it through.

Wonko has spoken.